LEIFHEIT AG Stock

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us for Leifheit's conference call on the business performance in the first half of 2026.

First, the management team will present you financial figures and important strategic initiatives. Afterwards, you will have the opportunity to ask questions directly. Please note that this conference call will be recorded.

I will now hand over to CEO, Alex Reindler; and CFO, Marco Keul, for the presentation. Mr. Reindler, please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Boas. Dear ladies and gentlemen, a big welcome to our investor call for the half year results 2026. Welcome, and thank you very much for joining the session.

As usual, we will go through an update on the key numbers on the financials. Marco Keul will take over. And at the end, we will close, as usual, with an update on the strategy and on the strategic initiatives.

So let me start with the summary. Here, you see first 6 months developments and main initiatives. First of all, I mean, obviously, a very challenging market environment. On the other hand, we have been investing into the brand in the first half of the year as part of the start of the brand relaunch. You see turnover minus 5.8%, obviously, not in line with our initial expectations, reflecting the challenging market environment. On the market data, on the market share, we have been receiving actually just yesterday, we see that reflected in the market in terms of market decrease.

On the other hand, we have been gaining market share in the first half in our key category. On gross margin, you see, I think, another great improvement on gross margin. We have been talking about this throughout the last 3 years, I think, continuous advancements and improvements. On the other hand, in terms of efficiency, we have now been communicating and launching our FOCUS program to really transform Leifheit into a simpler, faster, more customer-centric organization and therefore, strengthening our competitiveness and profitable growth.

As a result of the -- mainly of the marketing investment, you see an EBIT of minus EUR 2.7 million for the first half. And with the adjustments or with the investments of the restructuring program and the net sales development, we have been adjusting our forecast for 2026. So there, we are now stating that turnover will be slightly below previous year and EBIT will be stable as free cash flow on 0, due to the adjustments on the restructuring program, on the FOCUS program.

So if we start with the consumer, as usual, we see that consumer sentiment continues to be weak, no big improvements here, different by markets. In some markets, we also sense the decline in the customer or shopper traffic. And as I said, we see the market or this consumer sentiment within the market decline. We measure 2 markets now; manual cleaning and also drying, our 2 categories. The drying actually in Germany only for the first time. These markets are reduced by 5% to 6%. In fact, we see even a market decline in quarter 2 by 8%. So, all the negative impact on the Middle East escalation and on the higher fuel prices, we see reflected in the market. This is the consumer sentiment.

If we now have a look at the turnover development, you see that, obviously, the weak market conditions are reflected, although -- and they are outweighing the targeted marketing initiatives, which we had in the first 4 to 5 months of the year. You see the group negative by minus 5.8%, which you have seen before. Household is slightly more negative. Main impacts are here -- I mean, also overall, the discounter channel, so specifically Lidl and Aldi and the hypermarket, Kaufland.

These are the 3 most challenging customers -- discounters partly because they go on the private label strategy given the environment, specifically, Aldi. Kaufland more because overall, not only Leifheit, but overall, they have been coming into the year with higher stock level than usual. So, they were reducing promotions and pushing these higher stocks to their promotional aisles, also the standard shelf. So, these are the 3 main impacts overall, but specifically here on the household.

On Wellbeing, you see that our Soehnle brand, as you know, we have similar impacts here. They weigh a bit stronger, especially on one of the discounters. But there in the outlook, we are a bit more positive because we have been recovering some of the promotions. So therefore, we expect this in the second half to be better.

On Private Label, you see a very good development, 6%, which primarily comes from our -- we have 2 French subsidiaries here, Birambeau and Herby. The very positive development comes especially by Herby due to stronger promotions and also better promotions, working better in terms of sellout. So overall, a very good development. Birambeau is also on last year's level. So, you see there that the Private Label segment is performing stronger than the branded segment in the environment we are in. We see that also in the Leifheit market data reflected.

If we now have a look at the different regions, you see also here the impact of the customer I was mentioning, especially on Germany because these customers are very strong in Germany. So, these are the discounters and Kaufland. You see, therefore, minus 9.2% in the German business. The other regions performing slightly better than average. As a result, Central Europe with minus 3.7%. Actually, some of the markets develop on last year level or slightly growing with Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, so all where we have a stronger brand equity that helps in the environment we are in.

On the other hand, slightly below that number is Spain and Denmark, where we have a slight higher decrease. But the pattern is more in markets with better brand value with stronger brand awareness. And you know we have a couple of these strong markets where the development is much more resilient.

On Eastern Europe, therefore, a similar picture. But here, we are very happy with the development in Poland. One of our definitely growth markets, develops in the mid-single-digit positive. On the other hand, Czech as last year, still a very challenging market in terms of consumer sentiment to a certain extent, but also in terms of promotional pressure. So, Czech below that number. And then -- okay, you have the small part of rest of the world, outside Europe, where we have a mixed bag. It's slightly positive, but the number overall is obviously small, driven a bit by the U.S. where we have a small business.

So, you see the different quarters developing. After quarter 1, where we had a minus 4% in net sales. We unfortunately saw a stronger decrease, also on a stronger decrease in 2025. So therefore, definitely below our expectations very clearly. We see that same development in the market development. So the market developed in quarter 2, around minus 8%. So, even stronger negative than for the first half, as I mentioned, and therefore, reflected, obviously. I think one part is, for sure, petrol pricing and therefore, more hesitant consumers when it comes to purchases.

So overall between core and non-core, we have a very reliable core business with a CAGR over the last 10 years, 3x the company growth, 4% CAGR. This year, you see here core and non-core relatively similar. It's, of course, a picture we don't necessarily like. But on the other hand, we also now reduced some of the non-core businesses last year. And on the other hand, we also see that the market in our core categories, as I said, are impacted.

On the other hand, we also have some of the discounter activities, which we have not had in the first half. We are slightly more positive on that for the second half. Therefore, also, we are more positive, especially on that channel to achieve our outlook when it comes to a better performance. So, we expect year-to-go performance on last year level. And one of the drivers is also a discounter where we have gained some activities versus 2025, which makes us confident.

So if we have a look at the distribution channels, I think we see a very interesting picture, which shows a different development by channel. So, you see here especially growth -- strong growth in the DIY channel 7.5% growth. We are very happy with that. We have been developing that channel very actively. As you know, I mean, you see that this is one of our 3 top channels. It is also the natural channel of Leifheit as a higher quality brand. And we make good progress in France, in Spain, also in Germany, especially OBI, for instance, is one customer where we had a very good customer engagement, which led to the 7.5% growth in DIY.

B2C, we will -- we are talking about B2C, of course, a lot when it comes to e-commerce. We have very good capabilities, and we see a very strong growth there, 33%. So, you will ask how come? The main part of that growth is really that we are taking over more products from the B2B vendor relationship with Amazon. This has simply the background that Amazon is driving a lot of stability. So, they are not pushing all our products. And in that case, we are flexible with our seller accounts, take these products on and that reflects a very strong growth. But also other marketplaces are developing very positively. So on B2C, we are very happy with the development, and we expect that also to be continued in the second half. And again, it was always a strategic driver for us. So, very good to see that we move strongly there.

Hypermarket is more or less in line with the average. And then discounters, I've been talking about discounters already 3, 4 times, I think, in the last 10 minutes, but it is definitely a channel which is challenging for the category overall, so also for our competitors, but remains obviously an important channel for us as well to reach consumers and to reach interesting price points as well. And as I said, we are quite positive for the year to go with some agreed promotions already.

So, this is from my side so far. I'm back in a moment, and now I hand over for the financials to Marco.

All right. Thanks, Alex.

Let me briefly guide you through our financials for the first quarter because after that, we will get to our strategy update, outlook for the rest of the year and our Q&A session.

Looking at our P&L, it's worth mentioning that despite our decline in turnover, we were able to improve our gross margin in the first half of the year, but in Q2 as well compared to our gross margin before special items from last year, meaning our strategic optimization project in production, we are up by nearly 1 percentage point and we achieved that despite the fact that we had already a negative impact because of price increase of raw materials and energy.

Unfortunately, we expect that situation to become worse in the second half of the year, which made it necessary to negotiate sales price increases in Q2 that will become effective mostly during Q3. We will look at the development since 2022 on the next slide. Unfortunately, our margin improvement and our cost savings were not able to fully cover the negative effects in other areas. The increase was primarily driven by additional marketing activities, increase in costs by additional marketing activities, with investments exceeding the previous year's level by a mid-single-digit million euro amount, increased freight out because of the D2C growth and the high fuel prices and additional costs for strategic projects such as the FOCUS projects, we will come to later.

On top of that, we had EUR 1 million other operating income in 2025 because of a patent infringement, which is clearly a one-off. And all combined, our EBIT in the first half of 2026 is minus EUR 2.7 million, meaning that we are breakeven in the second quarter. Our strong margin improvement still goes on in the first half of the year, but also in the second quarter. In the second half of the year, it will get even harder to maintain our constant improvement.

Our expectation behind our guidance is still that we have to prepare for negative effects due to the war in Middle East until December 2026. Our countermeasures such as the previous mentioned sales price increase are already in place, so we have a good chance to make that happen. Needless to say that our strategy to strengthen our production capabilities and capacities in the previous years to become more resilient against those macroeconomic crisis is still is a clear advantage today like that.

Regarding free cash flow, we are at minus EUR 7.3 million after 6 months, which is EUR 3.5 million less than previous year. On this chart, here, you can see the different drivers of that development. The net result for the period is obviously negative. This depreciation is around EUR 0.5 million higher than in previous years because of our investments in production and logistics.

The trade receivables are up by EUR 3.3 million because of the dynamic of revenue during the second quarter, meaning that, like, in the first quarter, we had a higher sales volume towards the end of the second quarter. Our investments are temporarily up by inventories -- I'm sorry, inventories, are up temporarily by 4.3% and that also has to do with the seasonality of our business and with safety stock of raw materials because of our expectations for the second half of the year, which I mentioned earlier. And both trade receivables and inventories will eventually come down in the upcoming months. So, our goal is still to decrease our working capital until the end of the year.

Our investments of EUR 2.3 million, EUR 1.5 million below previous year. And due to the current business development, everything that we planned will, of course, be carefully checked now, if we have to cut or shift investments towards next year in the middle of that process. It is worth mentioning that within the second quarter, our free cash flow is EUR 4 million positive. And with the one-off effect of our FOCUS program, we expect our free cash flow to be breakeven at the end of 2026.

Yes, we are fully aware that the months ahead will remain challenging. But nevertheless, our commitment to creating sustainable shareholder value remains unchanged. We have no plans to alter our dividend policy and continue to believe that shareholders should benefit from the company's strong liquidity position. At the beginning of June, our shareholders at the Annual General Meeting approved our proposal to distribute a dividend of EUR 1.2 or EUR 1.20 per share and to implement the proposed capital measure. And this provides us with additional flexibility -- financial flexibility to support future activities.

Yes. And with that, thanks for your attention. I give the word back to Alex.

Yes. Thank you very much, Marco.

So, let's come to the strategy update. So the strategy, you know by now, while the market conditions remain challenging, our strategy remains the same. Question obviously is what is the next phase? And here, I would like to give you an overview first and then more details. So, these are the 3 elements which are now very important for us in this phase of the strategy deployment.

First of all, our Leifheit brand relaunch. We were talking about this in the previous calls. It's about sharper positioning. It's about making sure we address the right consumer needs with the right product innovations, and we have targeted marketing activities, especially at the point of sale. This is now coming to life at the point of sale while we speak. We have a phase-in, which will start now as of July, August and go until end of the year because it's a phase-in.

We have then the FOCUS performance program, I was speaking about briefly at the beginning already. And I will give you more details. It is about making Leifheit more competitive and future-proof as an organization. And then we have regarding FOCUS company news. I think most of you will be aware that we always have said we want to review our non-core non-FOCUS subsidiaries and businesses.

And we are now in -- we are now engaged in M&A adviser where we have a process of a potential divestment. This obviously -- the outcome of that obviously remains open, but we wanted to communicate this as an important element. So, that is FOCUS company. So overall, these 3 elements are the phase of what we are dealing now with, how do we want to deploy the strategy and how do we build and strengthen efficiency and resilience and obviously, future growth of the company.

Let me start with the FOCUS performance program. And it's important to say that -- and we have seen the efficiencies as one example in the gross margin, but it is important that this is not the first time we look into how do we make the organization more efficient. But now really specifically, it's a very important program to focus on the organization, on the structure, on how do we make the structure more efficient, more customer focused and therefore, also more focused on profitable growth.

To give you more details here, the goal is really as part of our overall strategy to increase customer focus and agility to be faster as a company, leaner and more fast in terms of response to new customer needs. And we want obviously to really create a better platform for profitable growth in the future. What is happening in the program? We have a new operating model, a new governance, which has orientated itself along the key processes of the company, especially lead to order, order to cash, so really process organization and therefore, really helps us to not only simplify these processes, but also digitalize these much better.

And you remember, we launched last year brownfield S/4, which is now a great platform to work on that. Overall, of course, with the savings comes also leaner structures and therefore, faster decisions, flatter hierarchy and more ownership of the teams. Obviously, up to 70 positions and FTEs we have to reduce. We want to do this, of course, in a socially responsible manner. And we have been doing so also last year with the production shift from Germany to Czech. So, we want to do that in a similar manner, obviously. with our workforce also in this project.

Financial impact, as of 2028, we will have the full impact, which is a recurring annual savings of EUR 7.5 million. First benefits are expected, of course, in 2027. And the overall implementation cost is EUR 9.6 million, which has an EBIT impact in this year and therefore, the adjustment of the outlook for the year. Total impact is around about EUR 5.4 million.

This is to the FOCUS project. I mean, in terms of headcount reduction, we have been, of course, working on that also beforehand already, but now the project comes and will bring the additional efficiencies. But overall, you see that also, especially in our production area, we have been reducing already positions versus last year. So now brand relaunch. I think something very exciting, which now comes to market really to drive stronger sell-out at point of sale. You have here some examples.

We started actually beginning of the year with a new packaging and also better products in the ironing area. Overall, what we try to do is stronger benefits, what makes us superior to private label potentially, but also to competitors. We want to have a more impactful brand presentation at point of sale. You see this. Maybe it's at the beginning on that picture in the middle. And therefore, also create, of course, stronger point-of-sale presence where usually we as a brand in a lot of markets are very strong in terms of space.

We want to leverage that better, highlight that better, make it more obvious and also with a clear call to action for shoppers. So it's the visual impact at the same time, really the -- what is the product benefit, what is the point of sales. So this, as I said, will now start. Next to that, we have innovations, and we continue to drive our innovation.

SUPERDUSTER, yes, we spoke about that a lot. I think it's, first of all, a very important category for us. We have not been present or nearly not present. We have now started that last year. You see the growth rate. Of course, that is still on a relatively low level. But overall, it is the biggest category we are in. It is bigger than floor cleaning. So a very big category, and we have a very strong point of difference. It's washable. It's reusable. It is sustainable and much better than the leader in the market, Swiffer. And we have been pushing that a lot. We continue to do that.

As one highlight, we now got distribution expansion in Kaufland. We were speaking about Kaufland before. We are now in Germany in 800 stores because performance of the product was good, and we continue to develop that. It is not the sprint. It is definitely the Marathon, I think. This is also part of that, but we have a great product and are very convinced that we will develop that continuously very positively.

Same breadth, the BLACK DIAMOND line. We have been launching that, I think, 3.5 years ago. And since then continuously develop the line. It's now around about EUR 12 million and growing. You see MAT 19%. We want to keep that momentum. We want to continue that momentum into the future. And therefore, we now come -- we came with new products already beginning of the year, but now we come with important cleaning. [ Coffee ], Clean Twist in black. So, we believe because this is a very big segment as well for us. This brings really new use to the category and it's also attractive for retailers because we get additional space, additional promotions.

We will come actually with an additional variant of that beginning of next year. So, you see that the pipeline is continuously coming and continuously expanding and more important is also to continue to develop these innovations like SUPERDUSTER, not to do it 1 year, but really continuously to develop that.

Then very important, and I think we are internally very proud of that. We come with Pegasus Rock Solid. I think the name is the benefit in the program. I think it's the best standing dryer we have ever done as a company. It's really reflecting our brand as quality leader and really giving here maximum stability mark-free, so you don't have the marks on shirts because they have the thicker version, a 10 years quality speaks also for itself. So it comes in 2 variations, and it will be dedicated especially to DIY and to our seller e-commerce D2C business. So also in terms of channel differentiation, we play this out in a very, very good way. So, that's from the brand relaunch, from the innovations and prior to that, FOCUS program. This is what we drive in terms of strategy.

As an overall summary, as an outlook, of course, I think we remain in a very extremely challenging environment, I would say. But we continue to deploy our strategy and develop our strategic initiatives. I think that's the important aspect. I think I don't have to speak more about the economic environment. We saw that also in our markets, but we want to really actively drive growth continuously and to be growing in these segments, obviously, as I showed you. So, we will further develop our innovation pipeline. We have a long-term innovation pipeline where more and more innovations are going to come.

Now the new brand identity being more specific why we are better, why we are the best in the categories we are focusing on gives us also a lot of reassurance. And then on the other hand, we also work on efficiency and resilience and therefore, very important. The FOCUS program, of course, with the savings, it will deliver, but even more important, I think, setting the company up in a better quality, being faster, leaner and more customer focused swill also develop future profitable growth.

This brings us to the outlook next. You know the outlook. You have seen it before. Of course, you could challenge, well, that looks challenging. We still believe that we can deliver that. We are -- of course, now the focus for this year, I spoke about that already. We think mid-term potential is still to make this a growing company on the one hand through the initiatives.

On the other hand, obviously, a bit of an -- in an environment, which helps us, is obviously also welcome. But then we think growth between 3% and 6% is feasible. If you have seen, we moved that out by 1 year. So it's 2028 because, obviously, we see that we first have to do the further implementation of the strategy to deliver that. And also on EBIT margin, we believe that we can deliver 7% to 10% in the mid and then even in the longer term.

This brings us to the outlook. Here in the detail for the group turnover, slight decrease of turnover, which makes for the year to go on previous year level. This, you see in the household same way. Wellbeing will improve in the year to go. And therefore, we expect mid-single-digit decrease. Private Label, especially where we will continue with a very good performance and therefore, high single-digit growth. And in terms of EBIT and cash flow, we expect breakeven. So, we expect to be at 0 for both KPIs.

Yes, as a summary, why we believe Leifheit is a good investment. We have a strong brand in attractive core categories, and we want to become leaders in more markets in more of these 2 categories. We believe we have the potential to expand based on our growth drivers. I have been highlighting today, especially innovation and e-commerce. And at the same time, we want to be more efficient as an organization, but of course, also here in production and logistics. And overall, Marco spoke about capital allocation, which we remain very focused on and very committed to.

So, that's the presentation for today. Thank you very much for your attention, and we come to the Q&A now. Thank you very much.

Thank you, gentlemen, for guiding us through the slides. So let's jump now into the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]

So, we start with Mr. Breitenbach.

It's Klaus Breitenbach. Can you hear me? I have a couple of questions. The first one is on your gross margin, which increased to 46.2% despite declining revenues. How sustainable is this improvement?

I certainly understand that it's not easy to do that, what we achieved because when you think about utilization of the production and so on. So, we have various negative effects within the gross margin, but there are no one-offs or something like that. So therefore, it's sustainable. It will be impacted by higher raw material costs and container costs we expect in the second half, but we will work against that with the price increase. So therefore, it's a sustainable development.

Okay. The next question is, which demand trends did you see in July and early August?

Sorry? What was it?

Demand trends. Demand trends, did you see in August -- in July and the early August for your products?

Yes. Which demand coming from consumers from the -- so I mean, August is very early day. I think August overall looks good. I think July was on the development we have been seeing before. So very -- yes, kind of in line with that. But we are quite positive now with August, but still early beginning. But again, overall, I think on the year-to-go development, okay, we are cautious. I think we have been kind of, obviously, ourselves disappointed by the top line development that I think must be clear. But we are more positive now for the second half.

We are running against a weaker 2025. And on the key customers, which have the key impacts, we see a much better negotiation on activation. So, this may be generally. But to your question, July more in line with year-to-date and August positive, but still early.

So, Mr. Kaiser, you were raising your hand?

A couple of questions from my side. I start with the first one. You already mentioned it during your presentation, the external M&A adviser and the M&A process you are currently in. Could you shed a bit more light on that, maybe assumed time line or anything else?

Alex, do you want to take that?

Marco, please go ahead.

Yes. We're in a very early stage regarding that project, but it has to do, of course, with strengthening our strengths. Basically, our FOCUS strategy is to focus on our core categories and what's not in the core will be checked and therefore -- but we are in a very early stage currently. And unfortunately, there's nothing that we can add to that at this point in time.

Perfect. And then maybe on your overall group sales and I know you already elaborated a bit during the presentation with regards to the household segment. And Q2 roughly down year-on-year double digit. Could you elaborate a bit more? I mean, you already mentioned discounted channels are hard and are also challenging and a bit more what's going on in this quarter and what we could expect for H2? Also, what makes you positive and convincing of this segment for the second half?

Especially on households, you're saying, right, if I understand?

Yes.

Yes, no, thanks for the question. So let me try to elaborate a little bit. So, I think, I mean, year-to-date, minus 6.8% for household is driven by the overall key segments. So in terms of customers, let me try to rephrase that. So discounter, Kaufland and Amazon vendor are the big impacts. Amazon vendor, we more than compensate by D2C. But the other 3 customers, as I tried to explain, are either having a different strategy for this year, reflecting the consumer environment. And this hits the category overall. They are going more on Private Label.

And in Kaufland -- I mean, Kaufland -- overall, Kaufland is highly dependent on promotions as a customer overall. They sell a higher percentage of their sales overall on promotions. And they were entering the year, but in a top-to-top meeting, I mean, this was the discussion overall as a company with a lot of stock level across a lot of non-food categories. So, also that was an impact for us. That was impacting half 1.

Now we get the first additional promotions, which is a sign that their stock levels are on a more healthy base. And it's a big customer for us. So therefore, that plays a role. That's why I'm mentioning it. And yes, that makes us more positive for the half 2 and also the discounters, as I tried to explain. We have some activities already locked in, which gives us at least a certainty that we will not see such a drop in sales overall and impact overall as in half 1, which then makes us more positive or makes us positive for the outlook of the year and therefore, the previous year level for half 2.

Perfect. And maybe my next one on the free cash flow down or negative EUR 7.3 million in the first half implies roughly EUR 7.3 million swing, positive swing in H2. Mr. Keul already elaborated on the inventory. So the initial plan is still to decrease inventory during the second half of the year by year-end. Is that the major swing we can expect for the free cash flow in the second half of the year to reach the guided breakeven level?

First of all, the net result for the period will go up. We will have lower inventories at the end of the year. And I think lower trade receivables and those positive effects -- those effects are the major effects that will drive the cash flow positive then in the second half.

Perfect. And speaking about free cash flow, already implies also a question on the dividend. I mean, your guidance for free cash flow is 0. EBIT is guided 0. Your policy is 75% of free cash flow or net profit. So, any particular plans on the dividend and maybe what visibility you need on the business as well as liquidity to still stick to your plan for 2026? I fully understood that you are not willing to change the kind of the overall dividend strategy, but particularly speaking of the current challenging year.

I think we have financial flexibility to think or to go in various or every direction, basically. But in a year like 2026 with, like you said, the challenges ahead in the transition period that we are in with our projects, FOCUS projects, which we are talking about, what that now means for the dividend for the year, I think it's too early to speak about that. But yes, I think it's too early. But in general, and that's why I mentioned it in my presentation, in general, we are committed to our policy, and we will not change that.

So Mr. Breitenbach, you are still raising your hand. Any follow-up questions from your side?

So, that seems to be not the case. So once again, any further questions from the audience, please raise your hand or use the Q&A chat of your dashboard to send us for questions. So any further questions then, please raise your hand.

So, there do not seem to be any further questions for today. Mr. Keul, Mr. Reindler, your closing words, please?

Yes. So, thank you very much again for your participation in the Q&A. So as we have been presenting, I think market conditions remain challenging. What is important is that, first, our strategy remains unchanged. And secondly, while the environment is challenging, we continuously work on and implement our strategic initiatives. So, we continue to invest in our brand, develop innovations and our growth initiatives.

And at the same time, now with the launch of the FOCUS project, we are building a simpler, faster and more consumer or customer-centric organization and make Leifheit long term more profitable. So we remain at the same time, very committed to creating sustainable shareholder value.

So, thank you very much for joining today and hopefully, see you soon in one of the conferences or in the next call. Thank you very much.

Thank you, gentlemen. So, we will now close this conference call. Goodbye.

[Audio Gap] Market environment is indeed very challenging. Despite that, we have quite good progress on our strategy execution. The overall quarter 1 results for turnover, we are at EUR 61.2 million, which is a decline of minus 4% versus previous year. Despite this environment and despite the challenging market environment, we invested into the Leifheit 2345wret654332wsadbrand, which showed positive impulse where I will go back later. We see on the gross margin continuous very good progress. However, we are still doing more on the efficiency and the resilience side. And as reported previously, we now started and launched the Focus program to enhance efficiency and resilience. On the EBIT, we saw an EBIT decline of EUR 2.8 million in the first quarter, which is due to our increased marketing investments. Still, despite that, we are confident for the remainder of the year and confirm our forecast for the full year 2026.

If we look at the market side at the consumer side, we definitely see a significantly worsened consumer climate. Main consumer indexes, you see here the European and the German, the ones we are tracking are in the case of the German, especially on the lowest point since COVID, especially the willingness to purchase or the consumption is weak. And we saw especially the input now on the petrol prices, which has an immediate effect on certain KPIs we look at. So definitely a very challenging environment we are in.

How does the turnover development looks now for the group and for the different segments and geographies? First of all, the group, we have seen that minus 4% decline. I think it is very important to point out that there is a lot of positive development in that number. From the 14 markets we track as our biggest markets, 9 are positive and on or above last year. So the decline is driven mainly by a few markets and by also very few customers. So -- and we saw across the first quarter, a positive development of the dynamic, which is also important to state.

You see household slightly better. We are coming to the core business in a moment, but slightly better, mainly because of Laundry Care, which saw a positive indication of a turnaround with a positive development versus previous year. Also, the innovation showed growth in the household segment, and I'm coming back to the innovations later. What was below last year was especially cleaning, slightly below with minus 3.4% and you see well-being and private label next to that. Well-being coming to that, so the brand Suhner, impacted by 2 customers where we had a loss of activities and promotions, which are Kaufland and Net which explains obviously on a low basis, the development. On private label, both businesses, both Bergamo and OB with a similar development, be slightly better, plus 2% development and Bambo slightly below last year, which brings us to a flat business and also for private label, quite a challenging market.

If we now look at the different geographies, you see obviously different developments by geography. First of all, Germany declined minus 6.4%. It's important to keep in mind that the first quarter of 2025 was a very strong quarter with 13% growth. in Germany. So we are against a very strong quarter. This has to be taken into perspective here. What went -- what developed very well is the DIY channel overall as well, a very positive development driven a lot by the German DIY customers, a decline we saw on the discounter business, and this is one of the larger customers I indicated at the beginning.

Central Europe, slightly better than the group, minus 1.8%. There, in the markets where we have a strong brand, we see a better performance. This is Netherlands, Austria and Switzerland with very strong brand equity. We see that we are more resilient, and these are the markets which are having a positive development versus previous year, which makes us confident. And on the other hand, the -- the countries where we have a weaker brand and where we are developing the brand still like Italy and also France, we have a slightly negative development versus the minus 1.8%.

Eastern Europe, you see pretty much in line with the total group. We see also there a mixed development, stronger markets because of some customer developments in Romania, for instance, flattish markets like Czech and a slight decline because of one specific customer in Poland. So overall, a quite mixed bag in Eastern Europe. And then rest of the world, I mean, more or less stable. It is anyhow a very small segment for us.

So here, you see the quarter-by-quarter developments. And again, you see here, I think, a minus 4%, which if you look at quarter-by-quarter, maybe starting from quarter 2 in 2025, you see a start of a trend reversal. We saw that especially in Laundry Care, but also in the core business. So this is -- gives us a positive expectation for the coming quarters, especially driven by targeted marketing campaigns, but also the innovation pipeline where we have in the second half, strong initiatives coming up.

So now to the core business. I think this is very important to state. Overall, our core categories are flat versus 2025. So they remain structurally attractive. And again, here, if we see the core business, especially in Laundry was especially positive and indicates the trend reversal I was referring to. So we have a positive picture looking at the core business.

If we look at the different distribution channels, we see very different developments. We see very positive development in the DIY channel, which is here now even in percentage, our strongest channel. It's definitely one of the core channels we have, and we see overall positive development. We see also very positive development in sell-out, and we are gaining market shares in the customers where we see the full category like OB, for instance, we gained significant market shares in the first quarter. So we are very happy with that.

E-commerce is a mixed bag because of D2C, yes, solid start, I would say, even a very good start in the D2C business with plus 7%. On the other hand, on the B2B, especially negotiation with one bigger customer here, which had an impact on sell-in, less on sellout. -- hypermarkets stable and discounter, I mentioned that already, we had less promotions in the discounter channel and therefore, a decline, especially here. All right. With this being said, I'm coming back with the strategy update. I now hand over to Marco Keul.

Yes. Thanks, Alex. Let me briefly guide you through our financials for the first quarter. I think it's very important, especially this call that we have sufficient time to talk about our outlook for the rest of the year and the Q&A session, of course. There are 2 main challenges we are facing, and Alex talked about that already in a way. Firstly, the current consumer sentiment and linked to that, the effect of additional marketing campaigns. And secondly, the execution of our countermeasures to mitigate the negative effect that the raw material and transport costs will have in the course of 2026, which also includes our so-called focus project, which we started to drive efficiency and speed of our organization to another level, which will then reduce all costs, of course, along the P&L.

And that in mind, looking at our P&L, we see that our margin is further improving, which shows that our projects of last year create the expected savings, but with 4% less revenue and the additional costs, our EBIT is negative with EUR 2.8 million. Three main effects are driving the cost increase, mainly the marketing campaigns, roughly in the mid-single-digit million euro range. Outbound freight because of D2C growth and current fuel prices that you are all aware of and the costs of projects like the Focus project, for example, other costs are below previous year's level.

Our margin development is still one of our success stories over the past 4 years where we were able to constantly improve. Now the goal has to be to maintain that progress even if higher input costs will hit us in the course of 2026. Our expectations behind our guidance is still that we will have to prepare for negative effects due to the war in Middle East until December 2026 given that our countermeasures to keep up the margin level and the additional cost savings initiatives will get us to previous year's level in EBIT. As a matter of fact, we published our expectation of a negative EBIT in quarter 1, together with our guidance for the full year in March already. But Alex will talk about our guidance later during that presentation.

I'm fully aware of the fact that investors and analysts, of course, will watch our cash flow development very closely. And looking at our quarter 1, the seasonality of our business is very important to take into account. Our negative free cash flow is mainly driven by increasing sales volume within the first quarter and especially in March, which is very important -- which is a very important month for us. One of our biggest channels, DIY is growing there, and Alex pointed on that earlier already, and we grew around 10% in DIY. And because of that dynamic, which within the first quarter, our trade receivables went up by EUR 17 million. You can see that on that chart very good.

Also important to notice is that in previous years, we had to increase our inventories mainly because of preproduction of our rotary dryers. But unlike in the past, that doesn't increase our overall inventories anymore. Liabilities are up by EUR 6 million because of the high production volume in March, but also because of the increased safety stock of various raw materials to face the Iran crisis and to strengthen our supply chain.

Yes, despite the fact we have a challenging months ahead, our commitment to shareholder value remains unchanged. We have seen -- you have seen our proposal to the AGM and which includes the dividend of EUR 1.20 and a capital reallocation, which will give us then more room for future activities. And with that, thanks for your attention, and I give back the word to Alex who will speak about our strategy update.

Yes. Thank you very much, Marco. So strategy update, that is the strategy you have all seen, I think, leading with focus creating sustainable value, we are determined in implementing that strategy. While the environment is very challenging and maybe also the top line development, especially last year is not up to our expectations. We have been working on bringing more and more to the light, let's say, of consumers, and I will come back to that, but also the other angles in terms of growth and efficiency drivers, we are in full swing of implementing that, which brings me to the phase we are in now. So what is the phase of the strategy execution in this moment.

And let me try to summarize is on the one hand, really making sure that we leverage the strength of the brand towards consumers and shoppers. And on the other hand, really working continuously with an additional activity on our efficiency. So this brings us to investment in growth while strengthening efficiency and resilience. On the Leifheit brand relaunch, that is the biggest asset we have. We sharpened the positioning. We increased our marketing campaigns, and we have and there will be more strong product innovations in the pipeline. This will be the investment focus.

And on the other hand, the focus program we have been introducing to you last time in our full year report. We have started that program according to schedule. In that program, we will optimize processes and costs, improve organizational and operational flexibility and aligning the organization for growth. So this is the focus. Let me come back now to the first point.

So Leifheit brand relaunch, I think something we have been working on the last 2 years. First, we had in the first semester, you have seen that strong investments into the main campaigns we wanted to drive. And these are also the best sellers we have plus the new innovation on dust. We have been adjusting our approach to make this as efficient as possible across the different media touch points. So what are the results specific results, I think, are important to state here. So we saw the successful turnaround of the Laundry Care segment, which grew in the last -- in the first quarter, plus 2.4% versus previous year. We have some sellout data I can mention.

I want to mention on the e-commerce area and especially on the main DIY customers where we have, where we see on the entire categories with investment an uplift of 18% versus quarter 1 2025. So strong increase in sell-out, which makes us very positive to see then market share gains in the first quarter. We will can update you on this in the next update when we get the market share data for mechanical cleaning.

What is now happening on the innovation side? It continues to be successful. The launch of the Super Duster -- so contribute to growth. You see here, we almost doubled the turnover. It's obviously still on a relatively low base, but it shows us that the product concept is working, and we are expanding distribution and sell-in net sales.

Black remains a very strong segment for us. And you see that we have been extending the product range into the product called Parade, a kitchen tool, one of the best sellers we have on Amazon, for instance, and instantly had a very strong success there and also the window wiper. So you see overall in the moving last year, increase of 12%. So it keeps working and also quarter versus quarter positive development here and contributed to the growth in these segments in quarter 1.

If it comes to brand relaunch, this is the first step we did in the first quarter. More is going to come. That is showcasing you how we will appear on shelf and visually. So more modern, more attractive, more focused on what is different, what makes our products better than competition. And this is the example of the ironing boards, which we have been launching now starting in February. We had a relaunch of the whole lineup. And you see here at point of sale where you see products mostly or in a lot of stores from the site, I think a very good shopper guidance to find the best products -- and obviously, the best products are from fat. So this is showcasing the brand relaunch.

Also, small innovations, I also want to highlight here, it is not always about the big steps and the big innovations. It is also improving products like the iconic rotary dryer, the Lino Matic. We launched here a new variant at a premium positioning, which makes even hanging clothes even more effortless, even easier, so making life easier. And we launched this first in Austria and Belgium because it gave us special impulse to increase distribution and get stronger in these markets and then the other markets will follow in the next season. So it also gives us an opportunity with these small upgrades to work on different market penetration. So that was so far very working very well in the first quarter.

There's more to come, and I can highlight this only in that way for the moment. We will keep on updating you here for sure in the half year call in August. Strong innovations are going to come. We will continuously add products in the Black Diamond line, especially here also new segments, which I think are very important. So that's very exciting.

And on Laundry Care, we will launch an absolutely top product under the Pegasus range, where we are market leader in most of our markets. So you will see the, I think, the best product we ever had. So all this will be very consumer focused, will be focused on where do we want to innovate, not all segments, but very focused. And it will also have a launch, relaunch cycle that means we will always have a follow-up product to really continuously have news for shoppers and consumers.

So as I said, we are investing in growth while stepping up our efficiencies and our resilience. And this is the performance program focus, which we started. This is really about simplifying structures and processes to reduce costs and increase margin but this is also to really have a better organizational setup and alignment of the organization and therefore, being more resilient and more long-term competitive. And we will keep you updated, obviously, on programs on this program in the next calls. So this is the update where we stand in the execution and implementation of the strategy. And as I mentioned, this is really the core of what we do despite an environment which is maybe at the moment not helping. So how does the outlook look like?

So first of all, in a nutshell, again, more challenging environment. I think we spoke about that, but we have a clear strategic response. We see obviously that the conflict in the Middle East, especially remains highly uncertain. It has an impact on consumer demand and on consumer sentiment as we saw. On the other hand, we really want to drive growth actively, driving demand. We have a clear focus on the core, which we now stabilize in the first quarter. We have a continued innovation program, and we have seen the increase in investments in marketing. And this obviously showed an impact on earnings temporarily. And as I mentioned, efficiency and resilience is key for us, and we strengthened this and are strengthening this now with a new measure, the Focus program I was referring to.

So we think a clear strategic response in a challenging environment. Our midterm outlook and our long-term vision remains fully valid. So we still believe -- and I think the trend reversal in the core categories is indicating this. We still believe that they remain attractive categories for us and that we can drive growth here midterm in the range of plus 3% to plus 6%. And by that, with efficiencies included, also drive EBIT margin up midterm from to 7% to 10%.

So how does the forecast look like for the remainder of 2026. This, as we said, we confirm the forecast has not changed. So we see slight growth overall. You see the details for the different segments, slight growth in turnover in 2026 and earnings at the level of previous year.

So in a nutshell, why do we believe Leifheit remains and is positioned as a profitable growth and attractive shareholder return stock. We have a strong vision, a clear focused strategy, which we are executing every day. We have a potential to expand, thanks to our strong brand where we are investing in, thanks to the potential we see, especially outside Germany and thanks to innovation drive, which is now coming step-by-step to the market and the e-commerce digital acceleration. On the other hand, very lean, efficient production and logistics, which we have been proving in the past years. If you look at especially gross margin and attractive capital allocation, as explained by Marco and the financial outlook for shareholder return. So this is a summary, thank you very much for your attention, and we now come to the Q&A.

Yes. Thank you, gentlemen, for guiding us through the slides. Let's jump now into the Q&A session. Please -- so we will start with Mr. Kaiser. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone. Just a couple of ones from my side. Starting with your top line, you mentioned that the turnover trends in the core segments stabilized during the first quarter following a weak start to the year. Just to get an idea, can you quantify the monthly run rate? So was March already growing year-on-year or still negative?

Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Kaiser. So as I said, we see a positive development within the quarter. We had a quite weak start in January also because of some shifts between the years and some stock level of a large e-commerce player. We then saw indeed, as you saw -- as you say, we saw a positive development through the first quarter and saw a positive development in March, exactly like you are indicating. Yes, I can confirm that.

Perfect. Very helpful. Then looking at the -- yes, second half of the year, how much of the acceleration relies on the planned new marketing campaign versus competing in the second half?

Excuse me, new marketing campaign versus -- sorry, I didn't...

The kind of competition easing in the second half compared to last year.

Yes. Yes. Okay. I mean regarding marketing budget investments, I mean, you have seen our strong investment in the first quarter. So we are reassessing that at the moment in general because obviously, we have to really assess the results of that, which, as I indicated, showed positive impulse in these and stabilize the core segments. For the year to go, I think it will be partly the campaigns we still have plans. It will be also the effectiveness on how we showcase the brand at point of sale. So now we come with a brand relaunch to point of sale, which will be mid of the year. which will be much more modern, much more focused on the -- what's in it as a shopper and consumer. And as I said, the innovations will also play an important part. So it will not only be the marketing campaigns. It will also be really full scale on point-of-sale activities, but also the innovation, which are coming around about September, October.

Perfect. With regards to the mentioned marketing budget, of the roughly EUR 5 million increase in distribution costs in the first quarter, how much is pure advertising marketing spend versus already higher logistic costs maybe caused by the Middle East conflict?

Yes. So let me answer on, let's say, on the media budget. We have been reporting this also previously. I think we have a media budget increase for the entire year of around 35% versus previous year. So -- because from the start, we said that we now need to -- we need the investment to drive the brand relaunch and the innovation. So we have overall significant increase in our media, which is more or less also what we saw in the -- or we will see in the entire first half. Second half, we are now assessing. It will be definitely on the level of last year. But obviously, we have to see there how much spending we can do versus earnings we need overall.

Okay. And regarding the logistic costs, you're looking at our distribution costs overall. And nearly the whole effect is the marketing budget, but the logistic cost, you could see roughly -- you could say roughly EUR 0.5 million.

Okay. Perfect. Very helpful. And then with the -- yes, you already mentioned the first half will be marketing front loaded. So is Q1 already the peak quarter? Or should we treat Q2 similar of magnitude with regards also to EBIT? You're talking about the marketing expenses then in quarter 2, they are on the same level as quarter 1. Did I understand it correctly?

Yes, to kind of get the feeling if Q1 was already the peak.

I mean, H1 in total will be front-loaded, but to get the share of those front-loading on the quarter basis.

Yes. From our perspective, it will be like you said, and we will see then lower costs in quarter 2, which then, of course, will help us to get in shape back in shape regarding EBIT. So therefore, the EBIT development of quarter 1 will not go on in quarter 2 then.

Perfect. Very, very helpful. Then you already mentioned the strong base effect in Germany in the first quarter last year. Will Germany return to growth on a year-on-year basis already in Q2, where the comp base was already much lower?

Yes. Thanks, Kaiser. It's a good question. It depends now a little bit on the continued sellout, I would say. I mean, of course, that is a target, but I think we are not yet 100% certain whether we will come to that.

Okay. Perfect. And then my very last question. Thank you very much for your patience. CapEx dropped from EUR 1.8 million to roughly EUR 600,000 in the first quarter. Is this just phasing or the current year structurally planned as lower CapEx year and what's the entire budget?

Yes, great question. It's -- currently, it's phasing. Within our guidance of the free cash flow, we expect investments of roughly EUR 10 million, like I said last time, EUR 10 million, and that's still the case. But to be honest, in the current situation, of course, we look into that and have to ask ourselves if we want to do everything that we planned in 2026. Of course. So there might be some savings then in the upcoming months. But currently, in the current guidance, it's roughly the same level than we had last year.

Thank for the questions. By the way, we are on the spring conference on Monday, Tuesday. So if you want to have more one-on-one, we can always do that.

So any further questions from the audience, then please let us know and raise your hand. -- so any further questions please let us know. Yes, Mr. Reindler, Mr. Keul, there do not seem to be any further questions for today. So gentlemen, your closing words, please.

Yes. Thank you very much. We take this -- the presentation has been crystal clear. So -- but thank you very much, everyone, for joining. I think to summarize, exceptionally challenging market environment. Within this context, we are investing into our brand, the strongest asset we have into growth, and we strengthen our efficiency and resilience. On the brand investment side, we see that it's an initial stabilization of our core categories, which is positive. On the short-term earnings, obviously, it has pressure. The Focus program now started to strengthen efficiency and resilience and full year guidance, we confirm despite, as I mentioned, the volatile market environment. So thank you very much for joining today, and see you very soon, hopefully. Thank you.

Thank you, gentlemen. We will now close the conference call. Goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us for Leifheit's conference call on the business development and financial year 2025. First, the management team will present you financial figures and ongoing strategic initiatives. Afterwards, you will have the opportunity to ask questions directly. Please note that the conference call will be recorded.

I will now hand over to CEO, Alex Reindler; and CFO, Marco Keul, for the presentation.

Mr. Reindler, please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much, and a big welcome, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our investor call for the full year results 2025. As usual, I will start, then Marco Keul will give you an update, a more detailed update about the financials, and then we give a strategy outlook and obviously, the outlook for 2026.

So if we look at where we stand, the 2025 was challenging, was a challenging environment, yet we have done a very good progress on our strategic initiatives and on the strategic transformation of the company. We first see here group turnover, which was down in 2025. Yet on EBIT, we have -- we were very close before special effects on the previous year level. We have a very attractive capital allocation with a strong dividend proposal for the annual meeting, and we have been implementing key strategic projects, especially in terms of efficiency in 2025.

So now 2026, the next phase of our strategy execution starts, which means we have 2 pillars. One is the investment into the brand relaunch in our innovations and campaigns. And on the other hand, we continue strengthening our efficiency and resilience with a focused company, which I'm diving more into later. If we see the consumer environment, obviously, it remains challenging. We see quite weak data recently on consumer confidence. The latest data shows a strong decline in income expectation, so in [Foreign Language] in German. And we also saw the tendency to buy at the lowest level since 2008, actually. So relative negative environment we are in.

If we now have a look, first of all, at top line, let me go as usual into more detail here. So top line development for the group overall, minus 10.3%, driven by the negative market. Overall, I will come back to the market development and also by the portfolio adjustments we see in the different segments. Household, slightly better, minus 9.6%. There, the core business, especially mechanical cleaning and drying was around about minus 6%. So in line with the market development, the market we are auditing, we get data from was around about minus 6% as well. So driven, therefore, the negative part with electric cleaning and also the noncore business.

In Wellbeing, so the brand Soehnle, we see a stronger decline of minus 14.6% was driven and we were reporting about that in the other calls by 2 customers, especially by Blokker, which went into bankruptcy. And there, that was an important customer for -- or there was a big initiative for Soehnle as well as the Blokker impact -- the action -- sorry, excuse me, the action impact.

Private label, we see at minus 12.7%. This is twofold. On the one hand, Herby, our dryers, Herby was stronger in the negative because there, the Blokker effect was very critical because this was challenging for a Private Label producer to compensate. On the other hand, Birambeau showed much more resilience with being in the mid-single-digit decline.

If we have a look at the different geographies, we see that first of all, the decline goes throughout the different regions. So Germany, we see slightly better with minus 7.8%, especially better via the DIY development, which shows stronger resilience and also the D2C business, the e-commerce business. And on the other hand, Central Europe and Eastern Europe, yes, as usual, a mixed bag of markets. So we see in Central Europe, slightly better the Netherlands, Austria as 2 strong markets we are in and a weaker development in France and Denmark.

Then the rest of -- then Eastern Europe, we see especially here weaker development in the e-commerce business in Czech and Slovakia. And on the other hand, the better business in one of our core markets, which is Poland. On rest of the world, which is mainly the business outside Europe, of course, there is especially basically the impact from the U.S. business where we have one customer and which due to stock level have not ordered in 2025 and therefore, resulted into the decline. Anyhow, the business is relatively small.

So if we have a look at the different quarters in their development, you see that -- and you remember that the impact for the different quarters in 2025 was different. We had especially impact in quarter 2, quarter 3, a better quarter 1 and also quarter 4 closed slightly better. So definitely a positive tendency in the quarter development at the end of the year, which was driven by better e-commerce, but especially also by the stronger contribution of our innovation, especially in the SUPERDUSTER Duster, but also the black campaign we had for Black Friday.

Structurally, our core categories remain very attractive. And you have seen that before, long term, the core categories, mechanical cleaning and drying had a strong CAGR of 4% year-on-year development. So last year, definitely disappointing, of course. The core, as I said before, was minus 6%, and this is in line with the market. So actually, on the market development in Europe, we ordered the mechanical cleaning, which is in that range. We have seen a better quarter 4 for us, so with strong market share gains. So overall, in the year 2025, we are stable market shares. So we don't have structurally losses there. It is driven by the market decline.

To highlight 2 of our innovations. First of all, the SUPERDUSTER, we believe that is strategically a very important segment. If we look at mechanical cleaning, the different segments within that, the dust is one is next to floor cleaning, the biggest. If we look at the last 10 years, the entire market growth was only coming from dust. So therefore, for us, very important to get a strong foothold in that market segment.

We have with SUPERDUSTER a strong point of difference, a sustainable solution. And we executed that very well last year with strong visibility at point of sale and participating really by the strong growth we have seen. We achieved -- slightly overachieved our budget for the launch. And now in 2026, we are very confident to drive this further with important consumer communication, which is essentially starting in quarter 1 this year. So SUPERDUSTER, very important. And we also on the innovation road map, we will work on further line extensions to continuously support that segment.

Then, of course, I think a real success story remains the BLACK LINE. We have been adding new products to that line in quarter 4 2025. And overall, we -- it resulted in a strong growth of 24%. It is now far beyond EUR 10 million, so a significant market segment for us and a very good development. And I'm coming back to that we also in that range also in 2026. This is for growth. If we look at efficiencies, it was very important for us strategically, while the business on the top line was challenging to really keep on working on the strategic pillars, especially if it comes to efficiency improvements.

And there, we had, first, the consolidation of the injection molding at our site in Czech. So the transfer from the injection molding still being here in Germany transferred to Czech, which gave us -- will give us efficiency gains going forward. And on the other hand, the implementation of S/4HANA, the new SAP system, which will also give us and we work on that through that continuously on further improvements will also give us further efficiency gains.

This being said, I now hand over for more details on the financials to Marco Keul.

Yes. Thanks, Alex. As always, I will go through our financials for 2025 and say a few words regarding capital allocation and our recent communication. And after that, we will give you an update on our strategy and talk about our outlook for 2026. Besides the decline in turnover, we made good progress in terms of profitability in 2025. Firstly, we increased the gross margin another 1.2 percentage points without the additional costs of shifting the injection molding from Germany to Czech of EUR 1.6 million, of course. And we were able to save costs below the gross margin of roughly 10%, mainly in admin and distribution costs.

Please keep in mind that the cost for the strategic projects, which Alex mentioned, such as S/4 conversion, brand relaunch, et cetera, are included in that. And that led to an EBIT only slightly below previous year's level without the one-off costs. And of course, an EBIT margin of around 5%, which has not been a bad effort for 2025. Taking into account that we also had no help from our foreign currency result, which has been 0 after EUR 0.5 million in 2025.

Let's take a look closely at our margin development, 7 percentage points in the last 4 years and 1.2% better in 2025 than in 2024. One of our strategic goals, as you know, is to strengthen our manufacturing footprint in Europe, which should lead to continuous margin improvement and due to focus on efficiency and flexibility and therefore, lower costs and higher resilience, which will be especially important in 2026, but more on that later. Another important aspect, of course, is the focus on profitable products within our campaigns. And for the second half of 2025, we saw the additional savings of our relocation of the injection molding for the first time.

Our free cash flow is still down versus previous year, but massively improved within the second half of the year with plus EUR 10.5 million. I will speak about the details on the next slide. However, on this slide, from my point of view, it's important to notice that we had a cash out of EUR 15 million because we paid good dividends of EUR 11 million and had a cash out of EUR 3.5 million because of the second part of our share buyback program, which ran out in April.

But let's have a detailed look on the free cash flow development. On the left, we start with our cash flow at the end of 2025 -- 2024. Our net result for the period reached EUR 6.2 million, which is nonadjusted, of course, and therefore, EUR 1.8 million below previous year. Depreciation and amortization are up EUR 400,000 higher than last year because of the higher investments into our own production and logistics over the last 2 years, speaking of which you see on this chart, the EUR 9.6 million we invested this year. And as you may recall, based on my rough calculation, we will require approximately EUR 10 million per year until 2027.

When it comes to working capital, we were able to reduce it again by roughly EUR 2 million, and we still think there's room for improvement. It depends on the growth we are planning and on measures we have to take in order to work against the higher input costs due to the war in Middle East. To put that into perspective, since 2021, we reduced our working capital, which means the trade receivables plus inventories minus the liabilities from EUR 73.5 million to EUR 42.4 million, representing a reduction of EUR 31.1 million in the last 4 years. And so on the right side, with the EUR 11 million dividends and the EUR 3.5 million share buyback, this brings us to the cash of EUR 32.6 million at the end of 2025.

Of course, our commitment to shareholder value remains unchanged. We will stick to our attractive dividend policy. And I think you have seen our proposal to the general assembly to keep the dividend stable. And as you know, share buybacks or share buyback programs is still something we are generally considering, but everything we do has to be balanced against the necessary investments in our capabilities, especially when it comes to innovations such as the SUPERDUSTER or optimization projects for the manufacturing, for example. In addition, we proposed capital reallocation to this year's Annual General Meeting, in line with our commitment to shareholder value. We decided to convert the capital surplus, which underlies specific restrictions so that it could be used for distribution to shareholders. On this slide, again, our proposal for this year's dividend, which would correspond to a fairly high dividend yield of 7.9% after 7.6% in 2024.

And with that, thanks for your attention, and I give the word back to Alex, who will give you an update on our strategy.

Yes. Thank you very much, Marco. Exactly. This is what I'm going to do. So strategy update as well as an outlook because you will be very interested to hear more about 2026. So first of all, the focus is execution of the strategy. The strategy remains, I think, especially in the environment we are a perfect fit. It is focused on what is our strength, where we are best at. We want to be specialists and leader in mechanical cleaning and drying. It is a focus on consumers where we make a difference, ideas that make life easier. That's the focus. And we want to invest into our brand to really drive growth.

These are the 2 elements which I was mentioning at the beginning. So the phase in 2026 is the next phase of our strategy execution. And these are the 2 important pillars. One is really investment into growth. We have and we want to come back to growth in 2026. Therefore, we have a lot of initiatives, especially around the Leifheit's brand relaunch. And on the other hand, we also want to drive -- continuously drive and drive even stronger our efficiencies with optimizing our processes and reducing our structural and therefore, increase margins.

Let me tell you first about growth. This is what you have been seeing before. Our 4 growth drivers is -- and let me talk about especially brand positioning today and innovation. Aside that, it is to see how we grow outside Germany and how we scale our e-commerce digital model where I can give you an update in the next call.

Brand relaunch. It was from the beginning when we crafted the strategy, it's obvious that we have an opportunity with really refreshing, rejuvenating and modernizing the brand. This is what we are now doing. So the brand relaunch will take place as we speak during the course of 2026. It is a sharper brand positioning, really focusing on the promise ideas that make life easier. We will see that on point of differences in the specific products and in communication. We have expanded marketing campaigns, so we will need more investments into our campaigns to drive growth. This we will be doing in a very targeted manner, very focused where we can win. And we will continue to launch product innovations, which are significant to the consumer and also to our growth ambition. So as a target, we want to generate a new growth momentum. After last year, we need growth, and we want to achieve growth by these key measures.

Let me talk you through a couple of important elements. So first of all, it is the investment into the brand, into the biggest asset we have. And we do this via targeted marketing campaigns in the best sellers to drive growth. We do this across different channels from TV to streaming to obviously digital also to drive our e-commerce share. And we do this with these 4 campaigns you see there. One is in mechanical floor cleaning is our Clean Twist campaign. Then you see the SUPERDUSTER campaign. So for the first time, actually, we now communicated to consumers in media, then important, the Pegasus standing dryer, as well as the Linomatic, the rotary dryer. These are the 4 campaigns. We focus very strongly on 3 key markets with strong investments, which is Germany, Netherlands and Poland.

At the same time, we have product changes, which are now coming up. and which are also visualizing the new brand image, being younger, being fresher, being more modern. We started already, and you see this already at some point of sales with the relaunch of our ironing boards. We come with more modern covers. And at the same time, on the right side, you see that with a better point-of-sale execution, which drives navigation on shelf. These products are placed usually as you see there on the screen. So they are easier to navigate, they're easier to find with the respective point of difference and consumer benefits. So new packaging and new presence at point of sale will drive navigation and sellout.

Here, another example, a small change actually, which makes a big difference for consumers because we know that consumers also wish to hang small items at the large Linomatic. So we have an improved version, actually the best Linomatic we have ever done, the Linomatic Deluxe ClipFix, which we introduced now beginning of February. So there's more innovation to come. And as usual, I can't tell you much more today, but we will come back to that, obviously, in our next calls that will be launched in the second half.

On the one hand, we will have an important extension of our BLACK LINE. This will be in the area of floor cleaning. And on the other hand, we will have an innovation in laundry care. And I can promise you already, it's the best product in laundry care we have ever done by far the best. And I think that's great news for a very important and big segment where we are market leader and where we want to further strengthen our market leadership in Europe. So these are the innovations which are going to come.

Now on the efficiency side, you will be interested to learn more about our program focus. First, I think it is very important that from the start of the new strategy, we will continuously focusing on efficiency to generate profitable growth. I spoke a lot about growth here. It's about efficiency. We have set up a new organization, mostly in marketing and sales. We have a very strong focus on lean manufacturing, especially for the D2C business, also in logistics, where we established the Central European logistics hub in France. I spoke about the consolidation of the injection molding last year and the implementation of S/4HANA.

Now in 2026, we started already. We are in the progress of the performance program FOCUS. And let me give you a little bit more details to that. What is the target of that program? First, the overall target is obviously to structurally reduce costs, but also strengthen the resilience of the company, especially in the environment we are navigating. This means that we look at our structures and end-to-end processes. We want to simplify them. We want to make them more agile and therefore, reduce costs and increase margin. We want, therefore, afterwards, align the organization towards that, towards profitable growth.

And as I said before, we want to strengthen especially resilience and also competitiveness when it comes to having a more agile and a faster organization and structure. We need to be faster than competition. And therefore, it is very important for us to look at the different elements of processes of organization and of resilience. So that's, I think, a very exciting and very important project. We will -- we will finish the project around about mid of the year, so mid-2026, and we can then give you obviously more information about the results.

So now coming to the outlook of 2026. So as I said, it's important for us to return to growth. And as a result, we will keep earnings stable due to the investments. So it is a very complex environment. Obviously, we are navigating, but it is a very clear strategic response from our side. We see a very challenging economic environment, obviously, now for around about 4 weeks, we see the conflict in the Middle East, which gives additional uncertainty and drives energy and commodity prices up strongly. On the other hand, we also see in the environment that, as I said, the consumer sentiment remains low. That was always our hypothesis for the year. But of course, now the conflict in the Middle East is definitely not helping to come to better sentiment there. So challenging economic environment.

On the other hand, again, we want to drive growth. We want to actively drive demand and sellout. And therefore, we have the clear focus on our best sellers within the core categories, which work where we have proven communication. We will, on the other hand, also continue our innovation progress and target new segments or also improve existing products make them more attractive for consumers and shoppers. And therefore, we need increased marketing investment to support this brand relaunch and the innovations to drive demand and to drive growth.

On the investments, obviously, they have an impact on our earnings. So the higher investment in marketing will be particular in the first half of 2026 and will temporarily impact our EBIT. Therefore, earnings are on previous year level. And last but not least, I spoke about the FOCUS project, very important that at the same time, while we come back to growth, we also intensively work on our efficiencies, on our structural costs and on our resilience. Therefore, the efficiency improvements in -- next to production digitalization to look into the processes, especially as part of the performance program FOCUS. So that's the package. That's the strong response to the environment and to be more competitive.

So this brings us to the outlook of 2026. You have seen that on group turnover, we expect slight growth versus 2025 versus previous year. We expect that in the Household segment. We have slightly different outlook for Wellbeing that will be in the mid-single-digit decrease. And on the other hand, for Private Label, we estimate a high single-digit growth. EBIT will be roughly on previous year level and cash flow will also be roughly on previous year level. So that's the outlook.

What still is in place is our midterm outlook. It remains in place, and it remains absolutely valid for us. Top line was not in line with expectations in 2025, but still, we are sure that we can achieve the ambition in the mid and in the long term and develop this company to a growth in the mid-single digit and to a much better margin as outlined in the midterm vision.

Okay. So as a summary in a nutshell, we believe that Leifheit remains very attractive in terms of profitable growth and as Marco outlined, in terms of attractive shareholder returns. We have a strong vision and focus strategy, which we are executing now continuously. We have potential to expand via our different growth drivers based on the brand relaunch, based on growth outside Germany with innovations and with e-commerce. At the same time, we have a lot of efficiencies when it comes to production logistics, but also in terms of structures and organization and very attractive capital allocation. You have seen that with the proposed dividend to the Annual Meeting 2026.

Perfect. That's it from our side. Thank you very much for your attention. And now we are very happy to take your questions or comments.

[Operator Instructions] So we start with Mr. Breitenbach.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Yes, I have one question regarding the development in new regions in 2026. So do you expect a similar performance as we saw in 2025? Or do you see any growth in any regions?

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Breitenbach. I just want to make sure I got your question. So you are asking about the different regions and our growth expectations in the same regions?

Yes.

Okay. Yes, right. I mean we don't give an outlook per region. But as I said, we have strong investments in our home market, Germany. So this is definitely where we expect growth. And otherwise, as I mentioned, in Netherlands, Poland, as example, so Western, Eastern Europe, I think overall, also, we want to come back to growth. So we expect for these 3 regions, slight growth, I would say. We have different focuses on different countries. They are in Eastern, Western Europe and obviously, Germany as a home market remains very important.

[Operator Instructions] So we continue with Mr. Kaiser.

Now can you hear me?

Yes.

Perfect. I would start with the top line development. Could you shed some more details on kind of a split? What was kind of nonrecurring negative impact? You mentioned the insolvency in the Netherlands, for example, and some portfolio changes? And what was the kind of the volume price effect on the decline of the top line? Any insights would be helpful.

Yes. Thank you very much, Mr. Kaiser. Thanks for the question. So I think the key is for our core business that we have no structural effects, but it was driven by the market. As I told you, if you take the market data we have, the market was declined depending a bit on the market around about 5% to 6%. Our core business in net sales, are pretty much the same. And also in market share, we did not see that we lose market shares. We had a very good quarter 4, as an example, in market shares.

So therefore, the decline comes from the nonfocus and noncore businesses. We had still some decline on electric floor cleaning, which we are phasing out. And then we had some other promotional effects also in the segments I was mentioning, Blokker as a customer had an effect -- so Blokker we had an effect with Blokker, which was especially in the Private Label business, an effect which is more structural, I would say.

In price effect, we had -- I mean, we do generally broadly slight price increases, price adjustments. We have done that also in '25, of course, at a very low level. This might change this year. So therefore, we had some price effects. But overall, we saw mostly a volume decline, and this was also visible in the market. So the markets were declining mostly on volume. We have some more promotional activity, but this was not to the extent you might expect.

Perfect. Very, very helpful. And then you've indicated that the cost saving from the FOCUS program will be used to finance increased marketing activities, particularly in the first half of the current fiscal year. And can you quantify the incremental marketing spend you plan for this year, maybe also compared to last year to get an idea of the potential magnitude of those spendings, if it's possible?

Marco, do you want to take that question?

If I understood correctly, I had some delays. I think you're referring to or you're asking about the increase in marketing spendings in 2026. Is that correct?

Yes, more or less on the overall sum you earmarked for marketing that we get an idea of the magnitude and maybe set it in contrast to what you invested in marketing in 2025.

Okay. What I can say about that is you will see in the first quarter and especially in the first half of the year that we'll see an increase in our marketing spending, let's say, mid-single or low to mid-single-digit million euros. And that -- there will be no effects of the focus project in the first quarter or first half of the year in that increased marketing spending to finance that. But overall, if you look at the second half of the year and the years following might be, but not in 2026.

Perfect. Very, very helpful. And my last one is with regards to your guidance and the Middle East escalation. You guide for slight growth in top line and flat EBIT, mainly because of the increased marketing spending. Is there anything potentially negative already included in your EBIT guidance, rising prices -- raw material prices from the current conflict?

Yes, of course, it is. We are expecting that in our current forecast or in our guidance, we're expecting that we will see effects on our input costs in the whole year 2026. So therefore, actually, the biggest effect that the additional input costs we expect -- we are expecting and which we use to calculate our guidance is a bigger effect than the additional marketing spending. But of course, you are working with different scenarios. And like I said, the scenario which we use is that we will see higher input costs or effects on the input costs until year-end. And of course, countermeasures to reduce those additional costs. And overall, then it brings us to our guidance that we currently think that we should be able to achieve within that environment the previous year's level on EBIT.

So Mr. Breitenbach, you are still raising your hand. Any follow-up questions from your side?

No, sorry, there are no follow-up questions.

[Operator Instructions] So gentlemen, there do not seem to be any further questions for today. Your closing words, please, Mr. Keul and Mr. Reindler.

Yes. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much for participating in our call today. So let me summarize. 2025, definitely a challenging environment with a weak market growth as a result. On the other hand, we structurally improved efficiencies in our cost base, and we further developed the strategic transformation of the company. For 2026, we now have growth planned via brand investments, via innovations via our core categories. And we have planned to even stronger continue our work on efficiencies. So the efficiency program will improve margins midterm. And on the other hand, as you know, we have a strong balance sheet, and we have a very attractive dividend, which remains a key part of our equity story. So that's it from our side for today. Thank you very much again for participating and see you very soon on one of the conferences or in our next call. Thank you.

So we will now close the conference call. Goodbye to everyone.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us for Leifheit's conference call on the business development in the third quarter and first 9 months of the financial year 2025. First, the management team will present you the business highlights and financial figures. Afterwards, you will have the opportunity to ask questions directly. Please note that the conference call will be recorded.

I will now hand over to CEO, Alex Reindler; and CFO, Marco Keul, for the presentation. Mr. Reindler, please go ahead.

Yes. Thank you very much, [ Mr. Boer ] . So ladies and gentlemen, a big welcome to our investor call for quarter 3, for quarter 3 results. As usual, Marco Keul and myself, we would like to share first the results of now 9 months into 2025. We would like then to give a strategic update, and we'll finish with an outlook for 2025 and obviously have then, as Mr. Boer said, time for Q&A.

If we look at the executive summary, it is definitely twofold. On the one hand, we see good progress on the strategic transformation and on the strategic key initiatives, which we defined and which we are implementing. On the other hand, we see a challenging macroeconomic environment, which especially gives headwinds and gives a clear impact on turnover result. Let me guide you through the main overview here. So on the strategic transformation, we have definitely forefront the optimization project, which we initiated in June this year, which is proceeding as planned, and we are having now consolidated the entire injection molding in our state-of-the-art plant in Blatna. This runs absolutely to plan and very well.

We see on the group EBIT before special items that we closed the 9 months with EUR 6.9 million, which is impacted especially on the turnover result, but which is actually showing a good result in the third quarter. We see gross margin before special items also here developing positively, 0.2 percentage points, and we continue to increase margin via productivity and efficiency gains, which is very positive.

Turnover, as I indicated already, turnover was challenging, very challenging in the third quarter, and we are now down with 10.8%, closing at EUR 179 million after 9 months. I will go specifically to the reasons, obviously, in more detail, but it is especially driven by decline in traffic, consumer traffic and lack of purchases, especially, I think, through all nonfood categories. Free cash flow, very strong improvement in the third quarter now stands at EUR 3.3 million.

And on the further initiatives, SUPERDUSTER launch goes very well and contributed significant growth in the dust segment. And we will continue with these initiatives and others, I will come back to that in a moment to drive more positive momentum also from top line in the fourth quarter. On the consumer climate, we have seen that last call, we see obviously that consumer confidence is still on a low level. We see this for the European Union, the EU27 stagnating. We see this especially for our main market, Germany, where, again, we had last week reporting on now for November also a decline based on decreased income expectations and also increased savings, so people save more and they continue to restrain their purchases in nonfood in maybe nonessential categories, food with the inflation over the last years is definitely a priority for many consumers.

So that's an impact which we see in the top level. So we see here more in detail, and let me go through that step by step. So resulting net sales results for the first 9 months, we see the group, you have seen 10.8% for the group. If we have a look at the different product segments, we see Household also impacted, especially we see here cleaning impacted by the strategic decision to step-by-step phase out electric floor cleaning especially. We see, on the other hand, also that over both segments, cleaning and drying promotions with weaker effects and also generally sellout decline in the category in the market data. So I will come back to that in a moment, but market data tells us that we are declining in the core categories in line with the market.

Then Wellbeing, definitely very strong decline on Soehnle, which are the sales, which is basically 2 key drivers of this, which is the impact of the loss of Blokker in the Netherlands and one big promotion we had on one nonfood discounter. The rest of the business is relatively stable. So that's positive.

On the Private Label, we see a mixed picture. Overall, of course, a decline of 14.7%, very different. Herby, we see -- we have been reporting that before already. Herby, our drying -- French private label producer of drying racks, sees the impact based also on Blokker. We had a very strong Blokker, very strong customer for us. And on the other hand, also competitive pressure in the market. On Birambeau, on the other hand, we are almost stable versus last year, slightly declining, which is in the environment, actually a very good development in the first 9 months, given that the French market is also very impacted by consumer sentiment, especially.

In the different regions, you see that Germany is declining 9.8%. We are almost in line with the effect of the total group. So we see the impacts there if it comes to phasing out certain strategic assortment decisions, and we see the similar market decline in the German market. Then we see Central Europe and Eastern Europe, I mean, across the board, you see that the decline of net sales goes basically across most of the markets and all the regions. We have, of course, different developments here. By market, more positive means only slight single-digit decline we see in Netherlands, Austria, Italy or Switzerland and a stronger decline we see in Belgium and Nordics. So different impacts here depending on, yes, consumer sentiment also on markets which are slightly developing in a different way.

Eastern Europe, you see here by minus 10.7%, better Romania, almost flat, weaker Czech and Slovakia, where we also see high reduction of promotion share and also there a higher competitive pressure. On the Rest of the World, the minus 40%, I mean, it's a small business we have here outside Europe is impacted by the -- mostly by the U.S. customer, which we have Pampered Chef, single customer, which has still a very high stock level from last year. So it is not affected by duty so far, but by the higher stock level the customer has in general from last year. So this is how the overall net sales development looks like by segment and by regions.

If we look at channels, we see a differentiating picture here. We see overall that e-commerce -- obviously has a great potential e-commerce. We have to differentiate here. D2C works very positive for us, is growing versus last year. So the D2C business works good. The impact comes more from the B2B business, where we also see an e-commerce impact on purchase and buying.

On the other hand, DIYs are also more resilient, also only in the mid single negative, so better than the rest. And on then we see [ maybe trend here ] more in the traditional distribution channel. So we see overall a shift in the market. I was speaking about this last time as well when it comes from hypermarkets, shoppers migrate to especially discounters, but also nonfood discounters. So we see this channel shift here happening. Therefore, hypermarkets, as an example, a bit more weaker. But we see this also on the retail, wholesale and department stores in a similar way.

So if we have a look at the net sales development by quarter, you see obviously that, yes, we are at 10.8%. So we had a negative quarter 3 of minus 15.4%. So definitely a stronger -- slightly stronger impacted than the second quarter. And again, I think by the different elements I was pointing out for the fourth quarter, I'm coming back to the initiatives we have planned to have a better result in top line in the fourth quarter.

So here, this, I want to pinpoint and highlight. We believe a lot in the long-term potential of our core business. We have been speaking about this and our -- this is the fundamental of our strategy. Core business for us is all what is cleaning, the cleaning range, manual cleaning, mechanical cleaning as we call it, and drying. We see that this long-term developed positive, much stronger and much better than the total company. What we see here now, if we divide the turnover development of the first 9 months into core and noncore, so core being these 2 strategic categories, drying and cleaning, manual cleaning, we see a very different development, and this I want to highlight. So we see the core business declining by minus 6%, which is in line of the market data we have.

You know that we are not having market data for all markets and all categories. But what we see also in terms of customer sellout, we consolidate that, this indicates roughly minus 6% market development. So we are not losing shares. But obviously, we are not compensating what on the other hand, the noncore development is minus 19%. So we are not able to compensate that according to plans, where we took, of course, also strategic decisions to phase out electric floor cleaning as an example, but there are also other impacts like we have seen for Soehnle or Herby are also included in that number. But you see very different development of core and noncore segments.

So now I hand over to Marco Keul for the financials, and I come back with the strategy update in a moment.

Yes. Thanks, Alex. As always, I will go through our financials for the first 9 months. And after that, we will, like Alex pointed out, we'll give you an update on our strategy and talk about our outlook for the rest of the year. I'm pretty sure that you're all aware of that from Q2 on, Leifheit reported adjusted KPIs for gross margin and EBIT for the first time, which was necessary to do because of the strategic optimization project in production. We expect it to have onetime costs of about EUR 3 million in 2025, which will be shown fully in gross margin. We made good progress within the last weeks, and it is likely that we won't need the full amount this year.

And as a matter of fact, we were able to release provisions of EUR 300,000 already in quarter 3. So without the EUR 1.5 million now onetime costs in the first 9 months or in quarter 3, our gross margin is 0.2 percentage points above previous year, and that shows given the fact that we produced less volume in 2025 and on top, lowered our stock level by now EUR 8.3 million that we made good progress in terms of efficiency and flexibility. And we will come back to that on the next slide. Our foreign currency result is slightly negative this year and compared to a positive EUR 0.3 million last year, it adds pressure on our EBIT, of course, and in fact, EUR 0.7 million if you compare to previous year.

And that being said, we were obviously not able to fully cover our lack of revenue in the first 9 months combined, so that our adjusted EBIT stands at EUR 6.8 million -- or EUR 6.9 million, while it was EUR 10.3 million last year. There are 2 things worth mentioning. First, we had additional costs within this year because of major projects within our strategic efficiency drivers, we call them, and that will strengthen our company and create opportunities for further improvement next year, such as the SAP S/4 conversion, for example. And we will -- in fact, we will go live in the next 2 weeks from now on. Obviously, the most critical part for the rest of the year is to concentrate on executing our marketing and sales activities while reducing our costs wherever possible without jeopardizing next year, of course, because we have to reach our EBIT and free cash flow guidance despite the fact that we had to lower our revenue expectations.

I'd like to point out that we were able to achieve an EBIT slightly above previous year in the third quarter. One of our strategic goals is to strengthen our manufacturing footprint in Europe, which should lead to continuous margin improvement due to focus on efficiency and flexibility and therefore, lower our costs. And another important aspect, of course, is the focus on profitable products within our campaigns. And for the second half of this year, beginning of 2026, we have already lined up additional savings of our relocation of injection molding from Germany to the Czech Republic.

Like I said, SAP S/4 will create options for improvements as well. And another big step of 2025 will be the start of our direct-to-consumer business, Eastern Europe from our distribution center then to -- which is linked to our manufacturing in the Czech Republic. It is a bit delayed, but it will start at the end of Q4 in 2025. And that should enable growth in that segment and reduce costs like we see in France already. Our free cash flow is down versus previous year, but massively improved within the third quarter. I will go or get to that in a second. On this slide, from my point of view, it's important to notice that we had a cash out this year of EUR 15 million because we paid good dividends of EUR 11 million and the second part, as you are aware of our share buyback program of EUR 3.5 million.

But let's directly jump to the free cash flow development. You see that, first of all, the net result for the period has been EUR 3.2 million, nonadjusted, of course. Our working capital has increased by around EUR 3.8 million (sic) [ EUR 2.8 million ], and that is mainly due to the increase in trade receivables. So we don't see any risk there, of course. Then we reduced our stock level by EUR 8.3 million. Our goal is, of course, to reduce that even further until year-end, and our liabilities are minus EUR 6 million compared to 2024 because we had to step on the brakes due to the current revenue development, like Alex pointed out.

Then of course, we had higher investments because of our optimization project. But if we look at only the third quarter, our working capital reduced by around EUR 4 million and our free cash flow stands at EUR 7.4 million and is therefore positive with EUR 3.3 million after the first 9 months and on track according to our guidance. Of course, our commitment to shareholder value remains unchanged, and we will stick to our attractive dividend policy. And as you know, share buyback is something we are considering. And now that our program of 2024 run out and we underlined that by canceling our shares just 2 days ago, but we will keep an eye on our investment capabilities in general, especially when it comes to innovations such as our SUPERDUSTER or optimization project, for example.

And with that, thanks for your attention. I give the word back to Alex to speak about an update of our strategy -- on our strategy.

Yes. Great. Thank you very much, Marco. So strategy update, obviously, very important for us while we see headwinds in the business on the macroeconomics and headwinds on the net sales, the more important it is for us to develop our strategic initiatives and implement them, and we worked obviously hard on that in the meantime. You all know our strategy, leading with focus, creating sustainable value. I think if you look at the growth and efficiency drivers, we keep on talking about these ones, and I really again want to talk about a couple of them.

If we look into growth, these are essentially the growth drivers based on the clear focus on our focus categories, stronger brand positioning, European focus markets outside Germany, a consumer-driven innovation strategy and scalable e-commerce digital model. Let me come back today specifically on 2 examples on the consumer-driven innovation strategy. I give you one on the scalable e-commerce digital model. And also, as also highlighted by Marco on the efficiency, I would like also to come back to 2 measures, which we have been developing in the meantime.

If we look at innovation, and if we look at -- here is the chart, if we look at SUPERDUSTER, we talked about that last time, the market potential we have, the market potential we see, really innovation giving us the opportunity to reach more consumer. I think a very exciting project where we are progressing very well. The key issue in dust, if you think about the main brand, which is in that market, it is disposable. It is entirely a disposable category. And we believe that with a sustainable offer, we can make a big difference for consumers and for shoppers. And therefore, we brought the SUPERDUSTER to life, a real sustainable yet also very high-performing dust product. We have that in 2 sizes. And so far, the plans are implemented.

We see that we placed already -- we will place overall 9,000 displays in the whole Europe for the entire year. We see that displays drive a lot sellout, overall, very exciting. And it is exciting for us also in terms of -- obviously, these products have a lower price point than usual, and they drive volume and consumer contact. So we will look at this year at around about 1 million products which we are selling. So definitely also great in terms of really getting to shoppers, consumers in terms of a lot of contacts we are creating. And for next year, as I said last time already, we have a plan to achieve EUR 10 million in net sales.

The BLACK LINE, we keep on talking about the BLACK LINE. We keep on adding new products to the BLACK LINE because it's a very exciting initiative, which is already 3 years in consumer hands and in stores. We see here still a very positive development in the 9 months of 2025, plus 18%. We are now coming with a very exciting initiatives looking at the fourth quarter. We now -- and I show you the results next time. We come with a big [ Black Week ], which we now do for the -- all the Black Week activations.

We do this stationary, but also in digital on our main B2B customer, Amazon, but also in D2C. So Black Week will be very important for us in November with a strong activation. So Black is always positive for us. If we look at D2C and this scalable D2C e-commerce, we are also progressing here. You have seen that. You know that we now have for 1 year France, and we almost doubled net sales for the D2C business in France by the initiative. And we have continued adding distribution. What is new in the third quarter is that we added ManoMano as a marketplace. So now reaching really the relevant, roughly, I would say, 90% distribution in the e-com relevant marketplaces. So now we have the distribution build up, and we will continue with investing and scaling this business. So overall, also this, and I mentioned that overall D2C is positive in the first 9 months.

On the other side, we keep on talking about efficiencies, which are very important for us. And I would -- to highlight again, 2 projects we are continuously talking about this. [ One ] -- and Marco made reference also for the numbers, what it means in numbers. We have the consolidation of the injection molding in the Blatna site, so which really consolidates the technology expertise there and really improves capacity utilization and should give us the efficiency gains also for next year, as mentioned. And on the other hand, we have mentioned last time for the first time, and I keep on -- we will keep on talking about that, a very strategic initiative, the conversion of our ERP system. We go to S/4.

And this gives us, I would say, I would summarize 2 aspects. It will give us a quality of the data and the improved decision-making, and it will give us more in quantity, maybe the efficiency, which we will see also continuously into 2026 and beyond. And we have first projects which we are kicking off to get more efficient in the organization also via the usage of S/4. So one more, and that is also important if we think now about next year and making how do we make 2026 successful. Some of the elements were quarter 4, but some -- and this especially is really focused on how do we make 2026 a successful year. So there are -- that is a very important strategic milestone for us. We have been working on the brand relaunch of Leifheit.

We have a fantastic brand, but we even want to make it better in terms of sharper positioning, being clearer on the consumer benefit on the point of difference and orchestrating that at point-of-sale, stationary, but also in e-commerce. We will continue with the launches with the innovation we are bringing to market. We have exciting news for next year, starting already in the first quarter, and we will keep on informing you about that, but it goes until September where we have a major initiative for one of the key categories.

So I think overall, a very exciting innovation program we have. And then, of course, we continue with supporting with marketing campaigns and really creating that sellout and then consumer demand obviously. So marketing investment, we will keep on a good level for us to really communicate our innovations. So overall, this we will be talking more about that during the course of 2026, but we are well prepared to make 2026 successful.

So now back to 2025, let me give you the outlook now for the remaining of this year. So as we spoke about, so we have adjusted the turnover forecast slightly downwards, but we confirm EBIT and free cash flow despite the net sales development, and this is due to all the cost initiatives, which Marco has talked about. So you see the group turnover comes now from minus 5% to minus 8%, comes now down to minus 10% to minus 12%. And the different segments, Household, Wellbeing, Private Label are adjusted accordingly in line with what we have seen, I think, also in the 9-month results, Household in line with the total, Wellbeing slightly more negative and Private Label slightly better.

EBIT remains in the corridor of EUR 9 million to EUR 11 million and cash flow mid-single-digit millions. So on the mid- and long-term outlook, despite the challenging macroeconomics, despite the challenging environment, we keep on focusing on the strategic transformation and on keeping, implementing the strategic initiatives and developing them forward, like I said. So our midterm potential, which we see and our long-term vision doesn't change because of the current challenges. So we still see midterm potential to grow 3% to 6% on the CAGR and develop our EBIT to 7% to 10% in percent of net sales. And we will do this via the growth initiatives, especially which I have been talking about and which we are keeping -- keep to develop and make significant changes.

So as a summary, for you, we continue to transform, we continue to develop our strategic initiatives with a clear focus on where do we want to be and who do we want to be, mean the European branded leader and specialist in the core categories. We have the potential to expand and reach this midterm potential. And we see especially key also the efficiency programs and efficiency gains we have been talking about, and Marco pinpointed one example on how do we create shareholder return and shareholder value. And you have seen this by our latest capital reduction.

So that was all from our side. Thank you very much, and we open now the Q&A. We look forward to your questions.

Thank you, gentlemen, for guiding us through the slides. So let's jump now into the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] Your questions, please. So we start with Mr. Kleibauer.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes, we do.

Yes, perfect. Yes, thanks for the update and the detailed presentation. I have 2 questions. The first is, I mean, the challenging market development will remain for the coming months and quarters, especially in the traditional retail channels. So what about the plan and the ambition to acquire new customers, especially to go more into the drugstore or supermarket channel with the SUPERDUSTER product? Are there any concrete, yes, plans or listings for the coming years -- for the coming year or maybe also some new listings in the e-commerce channel at marketplaces? Any update here would be helpful.

And my second question is regarding marketing budget, marketing expenses next year. You highlighted brand relaunch and more campaigns next year in the first half. So should we assume also higher marketing costs or slight raise -- slight increase in marketing cost ratio in the first half next year? Maybe you can give more insight here.

Yes. Perfect. Thank you very much, Mr. Kleibauer. Thanks for the 2 questions. So first of all, yes, new customers, thanks for that question. So specifically to SUPERDUSTER, I mean, we have been talking about that. We got a listing in one of the big grocery stores in Germany, REWE. So we could extend the numeric distribution in that customers. We are now in all relevant REWE stores, not in the very small ones. So that was a big win for us.

Regarding drugstores, absolutely, that is our target. We have discussions about that. I mean, if you know drugstore customers, they want to see results first. So we provide that at the moment. I think we work absolutely on that to generate the success these customers want to see. But to answer your questions, yes, we are in discussions, and I think this is definitely a target for us to get listings in these customers in these drugstore businesses, especially with the SUPERDUSTER because that's a great entry product for us. But we also work on other customers, of course. Let me highlight this as well. Again, we -- the channel shift makes discounters for us more important. So we have discussions with all the relevant discounter.

SUPERDUSTER, they are also a good example because from the start of the project, we call this collision-free assortment. So we have another item which is especially dedicated to discounters, slightly different functionality and therefore, reduce costs to enter in a very profitable way the discounter. And there, we actually got 2 additional promotions in the fourth quarter, which is very positive in both very big food discounters. And you asked for e-commerce, obviously, we work on that every day. If you ask me, the big opportunity for us now, if we look at France, next is definitely Poland on the list. And there we speak about Allegro. And there also ties in the project Marco Keul mentioned in terms of D2C capabilities then from our Blatna site. So what we have done in Chablis with France, we then plan from Blatna to Eastern Europe. So there are other platforms as well, but Allegro would be one. So that's maybe to your first question -- to the second question, I mean, always the challenge, right?

I mean we need marketing budget to really obviously to create consumer demand. It's essential. So we have a very strong program in the first half. We will be tilted to the first half to create a good start. But overall, we want also to keep on working on our efficiencies in terms of targeting the right consumer and making marketing budget very efficient. So we will keep more or less the level of marketing budget investments from this year. But also please understand that we work through the budget at the moment. So this is not all decided. So we are going to look into that. But definitely on especially point-of-sale execution, we also will invest in the relaunch. Yes. So therefore, in simple terms, we keep more or less the level of this year, but we will definitely work on efficiencies, especially in digital investments. Other questions, please.

[Operator Instructions] So we continue with [ Mr. Lukas Sprung ].

Yes. I have 2 questions. The one is regarding the operating cash flow. Revenue was down, inventories were up. Why was this the case? So normally, you should have a lower inventory level. And then the second one is regarding your midterm ambitious or ambitions. If we now take the 2025 outlook as a base for the next years to get to that EUR 300 million revenue, you should be in the upper end of your 3% to 6% revenue growth per year CAGR. Why do you expect now to be that successful in terms of revenue growth because now you have this difficult environment, you have consumer sentiment, which is not best currently in Germany. And so it seems to be very optimistic from a revenue decline into, let's say, 5% to 6% revenue growth in the next years. Do you see also some catch-up effects in general? Or what makes you confident to reach this revenue growth?

Yes. Thanks, Mr. Sprung. Thanks for the 2 questions. Maybe I'll take the first -- the second one and then Marco will answer the other regarding free cash flow. So I hope I understood the question in the right way. It was partly not easy to understand you, but you were referring to the midterm potential and whether this is not too optimistic. So on the one hand, I mean, saying this also clearly, we -- the challenges we see in the market and the market development at the moment I mean, on the one hand, we are prepared that this will continue for a while. So we are not assuming that this all will change on January 1, and we are preparing for that. And this is the cost focus we also have.

But what does not change is that midterm, we believe that 3% to 6% growth we can achieve via our focused strategy on the focus categories, because if we see the innovations coming in, if we see the e-commerce driving stronger and all our strategic initiatives, this is where the growth should then come from. But obviously, if the environment keeps as challenging as currently, we see that this is also being -- then we will not be at the higher end of that spectrum. And we are also not saying that we will make up for the '25 and be at the same time at EUR 300 million, right? So -- but again, we keep the midterm that we think with this strategy, we can be growing 3% to 6%, keeping all the context in mind, which I was trying to outline. Marco, maybe you first.

Yes. Yes. Thanks. Thanks. To your first question then, I'm not sure if I did get it correctly, but let me quickly answer and then you can maybe react to that. The inventory level is not up. The inventory level is down by EUR 8.3 million. And what I see is or what we think is very positive within the Q3 is that even with the lower utilization of our manufacturing because of the gross sales development, revenue development, we were able to adjust to that. We were able to keep the costs more or less stable. We have a better gross margin because of that, and we were able to manage the inventory level down by EUR 8.3 million. I think you asked me why this [ up -- in the lower cost, right ]?

That is a misunderstanding from my side. Sorry for that.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

And coming back to the midterm ambition, so could be possible that you have to, let's say, change your 2030 number or target into a later year?

Yes. So Mr. Sprung, if you look at our midterm outlook, I mean, we have never been super specific on when that is exactly happening. So I think we all understand that we need a bit of -- we wanted to give a spectrum there. But yes, I think we don't want to be overly optimistic thinking that '25 gap in net sales, we will just make up in '27, '28. I agree to that. I think this is what you indicated. So if you want to put it like this, yes, we could have a delay of a year because absolutely, we are coming, of course, with this top line development, the EUR 300 million gets more distant. What I'm speaking about is that we are strongly believing that 3% to 6% top line development, we will come back to that or we come to that. Yes. So any other questions, please?

[Operator Instructions] Mr. Sprung, you're still raising your hand. Any further questions from your side? It's not the case. [Operator Instructions] So gentlemen, there do not seem to be any further questions for today. Your closing words, please.

Yes. Thank you very much. So thanks to all of you for joining again. Thank you for that. Thanks for the questions as well. So definitely, as a summary, I mean, we are in a challenging environment, which we see in our top line results. We see that the core business is slightly better than what we also decided strategically. Overall, what is very important for us is that we continue to work on our strategic initiatives.

And you have seen that, that we clearly work on costs, that we clearly work on efficiencies. But on the other hand, also to prepare 2026 and beyond with our growth drivers and growth initiatives. And I wanted -- I think I spoke about some of them. If you think about innovation, if we see the scaling of the e-commerce digital model, but also the growth outside Germany. So keeping a focus on building that transformation, that's key for us and especially again, to prepare 2026. So that's the summary from our side. Again, thank you very much for joining, and we hope to see you next time.

So we will now close the call. Goodbye to everyone.

Bye-bye.